WEEKEND REVIEWS : Theater : ‘Folly’: An Engaging Celebration of Life’s Absurdity

With “She Stoops to Folly,” Irish playwright Tom Murphy transforms Oliver Goldsmith’s 1766 novel “The Vicar of Wakefield” into a wonderfully absorbing play--considerably shorter and less all-encompassing than Charles Dickens’ “Nicholas Nickelby,” but very, very similar. The reason: Novels told great stories in the days when a character’s struggle to maintain virtue was a real cliffhanger. Why, authors could hinge entire plots on the question of a woman’s chastity.

Murphy’s adaptation, charmingly staged by Barbara Damashek at South Coast Repertory, is named in homage to Goldsmith’s play “She Stoops to Conquer.” It is misnamed, though, because the story centers on the Vicar Primrose, here played by Jim Norton with a rare blend of dignity and foolishness, as if he managed to fuse Ian Richardson and Stan Oliver. The woman who stoops to folly is Olivia (Devon Raymond), the Vicar’s credulous daughter. She is seduced by the thoroughly evil Ned Thornhill (played with relish by Douglas Sills) when the family loses its fortune and must board on Thornhill’s estate.

“Folly” has its share of devious villains and disguised saviors, all of them easily recognizable to the audience if not to the family Primrose. The pleasure of the plot lies not in its surprises (there are none) but in its delightful and evenhanded tone, one that acknowledges life’s cruelty while celebrating its warmth and absurdity.

This masterfully told story is played out on Ralph Funicello’s ingenious set, which features huge, half-hidden clockwork above, wheels that stand still during the scenes and go round when the action stops. The movement of these timepieces, accompanied by Nathan Birnbaum’s percolating incidental music, coveys the inexorable passing of time but with a lightness and whimsicality that permeates Goldsmith’s tale. Rakes will surely progress, the clocks seems to say, but goodness wins out in the end.

From the cast of “Nicholas Nickelby,” Jane Carr plays the Vicar’s wife, known only as Mrs. Primrose. This is a woman who loves her husband for his goodness but at the same time finds his constant morality inconvenient to her worldly ambitions. When the family is forced to find common lodgings in another town, she pronounces the town’s name--”Low Groansbury”--with a delicious combination of condemnation and fortitude that perfectly characterizes her.

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The large cast is very good in instantly conveying everything an audience needs to know so that the plot can go its way. Raymond’s Olivia is foolish without being ridiculous, and Jennifer Parsons is efficiently virtuous as the more sensible sister Sophy. The only actor who must be darkly unreadable, Ron Boussom, is nicely dangerous as Thornhill’s sometimes malicious friend Reverend Jenks. Art Koustik is very funny in a small part as an abused servant, as is Emily Chase as an overly powdered and crinolined prostitute. And Sills is the kind of smiling rake (or snake) who can make an audience hiss with his apparently irredeemable ways (or are they?).

The Vicar’s foolish belief in the general rightness of the world eventually gives way under a Job-like string of sorrows. He is brave in the face of poverty because he believes to the bottom of his soul that there is no shame in it. In Olivia’s seduction, he is confronted with actual shame (according to his society and his religion), and he is unfailingly generous and forgiving. But when he is locked in debtors jail and unable to help his family through ever-worsening crises, he has had enough. He stands on a table and demands an accounting from God.

The Vicar pulls himself together to deliver to the prisoners a sermon on suffering and “its peculiar rewards to the unhappy.” In this remarkable speech, which is pure eloquence, the Vicar manages to find comfort in suffering without the enshrinement of martydom, a nifty and rare theological trick.

If the playwright errs, it is at the end, when the family regains its lost stature. This finale is almost tossed off, encouraging laughs not at the story’s happy conclusion but at the absurd ease with which fortunes fall back into place. Here Murphy seems to lose faith and acknowledge an overly quaint quality to the tale. Henry James called this novel “happy in the manner [of] a man who has married an angel or been appointed to a sinecure.” The dark is thrown off with too much force, and a story that has managed throughout to avoid the sappy falls into it at last.

* “She Stoops to Folly,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 7:30 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 2:30 p.m. Ends Oct. 8. $17-$38. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 40 minutes.

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Jim Norton: Vicar

Jane Carr: Mrs. Primrose

Scott Denny: George

Devon Raymond: Olivia

Jennifer Parsons: Sophy

Christopher DuVal: Moses

Aaron Cohen, Anthony Petrozzi: Dick

Andrew Wood, Jason Lau: Bill

Richard Doyle: Mr. Burchill

Douglas Sills: Mr. Thornhill

Ron Boussom: Reverend Jenks

Lynne Griffin: Lady Blarney

Emily Chase: Miss Wilmot/Miss Skeggs

Don Took: Reverend Wilmot/Flamborough

Art Koustik: Landlord/Butler

Todd Fuessel: Timothy Baxter

A South Coast Repertory production. By Tom Murphy. Directed by Barbara Damashek. Sets Ralph Funicello. Costumes Shigeru Yaji. Lights Peter Maradudin. Incidental music and sound Nathan Birnbaum. Songs by Barbara Damashek. Choreography Sylvia C. Turner. Production manager Michael Mora.